Tag Archives: Center for American Progress

Claiming that it is seizing domain names (like amoyhy.com and do search that site so you can see the DHS seizure notice) that are infringing on copyright and counterfeit laws, the DHS has been pretty busy while the rest of us were enjoying turkey and pumpkin pie.

These domain owners had no advance notice or warnings and in fact, even godaddy.com was unaware that its clients were losing their sites. until after the deed was done.

The targets – at this time – are bootleg music and replica or as DHS calls them, counterfeit handbag-type sites.

Seriously, you’re ordering a Louis Vuittan bag for $49.95 and you think it’s authentic? You really are a dope, if you think so.

So while we’re on the topic of counterfeit, bootleg and pirated stuff, how about this story: Center for American Progress using presidential seal on its ‘teaching Obama how to be a progessive president’ materials.

ALG [Americans for Limited Government] President Bill Wilson initially sent a letter to White House counsel Robert Bauer asking if he granted an exception to the Center for American Progress to use the seal for its publication, “The Power of the President: Recommendations to Advance Progressive Change.”

The report offers President Obama a blueprint on how he can advance his agenda through the use of executive orders, instead of relying on Congress after Democrats lost control of the House in this month’s midterm elections.

There’s been no response from the White House or from the DOJ on whether permission was granted to CAP to use the seal on its publication. As the Fox story explains, the use of the seal is very narrow and limited primarily to educational and historical purposes. You can’t just go around slapping THE seal on documents without asking first. . . unless you’re John Podesta or on the George Soros payroll, then I suppose it’s okay to pirate THE seal to promote your propaganda.

Is this the change all those college students voted for? Their music and faux designer handbag and shoe sites are being shut down by DHS – like they have nothing more important to shut down – and the regime is making noises about deactivating their cell phones in their cars.

I hope they are loving this “fundamental transformation” they went all gah-gah over 2 years ago.

Astroturfing is what Erick calls this new counter movement. This site has connections that trail back toMoveOn.org, Democracy in Action, the Center for American Progress (John Podesta), the Obama WH and more directly, Cass Sunstein. It’s goal is to discredit and infiltrate the Tea Party movement through sneaky methods.

God Bless these patriots who keep the light on those who are trying to defame and discredit true American descent.

Read on from RedState.com:

Astroturf is the act of professional interest groups designing campaigns that appear to be grassroots efforts, but are not. It is what the left has accused the tea parties of being. Only more and more it looks like the anti-tea party movement is truly astroturfing.

In other words, Cass Sunstein has favored the government using outside parties as government propaganda agents to paint their opposition as fringe and undermine their credibility. Kind of like what has been happening with the tea party movement – lots of SEIU members pretending to be tea party activists causing violence in front of TV cameras.

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging

Considering Sustein’s recommendations, it is not far removed to speculate the Obama administration is behind a new anti-tea party website called The Other 95, which defends the government from tea party criticisms and attacks the tea party movement as fringe.

The website purports to be authentically grassroots, though one must wonder when the last time was any grassroots activist took the time to defend the government.

Podesta served on the staff of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) from 1981 to 1988. Leahy was an early advocate of circumventing the U.S. Constitution by gaining control over federal courts. Podesta assisted Leahy in pioneering the indiscriminate smearing and filibustering of any and all Republican judicial nominees — a practice previously unknown in Washington.

In 1988 Podesta teamed up with his brother Anthony to form the Washington lobbying firm Podesta Associates. One of their first clients was Michael Dukakis. John Podesta served as opposition research director — commonly dubbed a “dirt digger” — for Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign.

While serving as a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, [Mark] Lloyd called for the government to reduce the number of broadcast outlets a company own as a means of reducing the number of radio stations carrying conservative programs. He wrore that “no one entity should control more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market.”

Lloyd also said that no one entity should own “more than four commercial stations in large markets (a radio market with 45 or more commercial stations).”

Currently, an entity may own no more than eight stations in a large market. Lloyd’s recommendation, were it to become policy, could force station owners carrying programs such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin to sell their stations. CNSNews.com

This man is dangerous. Well, hell knock me alongside the head – the whole administration is dangerous – what am I thinking?

Not only is Lloyd calling for the censoring of conservative radio hosts, but he’s lowering the bar at how many stations a private business can own. Obviously, a consumer driven market means nothing to this guy. Or he’s not smart enough to understand the basic economics of it.

Or maybe the real true answer is that he understands this all too well and it scares him.

How did we get all these communists in power at one time? Where is Joseph McCarthy now? Don’t answer those questions… like you, I already know.

Phone :202-974-8300 (Just for fun, call this number and see who answers. I did.)

888 16th St NW, Washington DC

What is the Shadow Party?

Nationwide network of non-profit activist groups, whose agendas are ideologically to the left, which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats

Consists of more than five dozen unions, activist groups and think tanks

Activities include fundraising, get out the vote drives, political advertising and covert operations

Conceived and organized principally by George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Harold McEwan Ickes

A political consultancy called the Thunder Road Group (TRG), located on the 7th Floor of the historic Motion Picture Association of America headquarters at 888 Sixteenth Street NW in Washington, DC, serves as the unofficial headquarters of the Shadow Party. Three other Shadow Party groups also lease space in the same building, including America Coming Together (ACT), America Votes, and the Partnership for America’s Families. The clustering of these groups in a building owned by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is significant. The MPAA has long enjoyed a close relationship with the Democratic Party; many high-ranking Democrats have transitioned comfortably from government jobs into glamorous posts in the MPAA’s upper management.

As of August 2004, the husband-wife team of George Soros and Susan Soros had contributed $13,120,000 to Shadow Party groups and operations, second only to Soros’ longtime friend and collaborator, insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis ($14,175,000). The third leading donor was Jane Fonda ($13,085,750), followed by Hollywood producer Stephen Bing in fourth place ($9,869,014). Other major funders of the Shadow Party include the Tides Foundation and the Open Society Institute.

No one knows who first coined the term “Shadow Party.” In the November 5, 2002 Washington Post, writer Thomas B. Edsall wrote of “shadow organizations” springing up to circumvent McCain-Feingold’s soft money ban. Journalist Lorraine Woellert first called the Democrat network a “shadow party” in a September 15, 2003 Business Week article titled, “The Evolution of Campaign Finance?” Other journalists quickly followed suit. Some journalists refer to the Shadow Party as “the 527s” or “the 527 groups.” These terms derive from the fact that most of the non-profit groups within the Shadow Party are registered under Section 527 of the U.S. tax code. Section 527 groups face weaker regulation and looser disclosure requirements than other types of non-profit groups. Thus they are better suited for operating in the shadows, in areas of dubious legality. Section 527 groups are used for raising “soft money.” For a thorough explanation of Section 527 groups and soft money, click here.

Wall Street billionaire George Soros is the Shadow Party’s principal founder and mastermind. Clear hints of Soros’ intentions began to appear as early as the 2000 election. It was then that Soros (shouldering about one-third of the cost) sponsored the so-called “Shadow Conventions.” Organized by author, columnist, and socialite Arianna Huffington, the Shadow Conventions were media events designed to lure news crews from the real party conventions that year. Huffington held her “Shadow Conventions” at the same time and in the same cities as the Republican and Democratic Conventions, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles respectively, and featured leftwing critics of mainstream politics. The Shadow Conventions promoted Huffington’s view that neither Democrats nor Republicans served the interests of the American people any longer. In Huffington’s view, U.S. politics needed a third force to break the deadlock.

Among the issues highlighted at the Shadow Conventions were racism, class inequality, marijuana legalization and campaign finance reform. Most speakers and delegates pushed a hard-left line, accompanied by “Free Mumia” [convicted cop killer and former Black Panther memeber] chants from the crowd and an incendiary tirade by Jesse Jackson. A former conservative, Huffington told reporters, “I have become radicalized.”

The Shadow Conventions were purely symbolic affairs. They fielded no candidates for office. However, many of Soros’ activities during the 2000 campaign went beyond symbolism. It was during the 2000 election that Soros first experimented with raising campaign funds through Section 527 groups. In preparation for the 2000 election, Soros assembled a team of wealthy Democrat donors to help him push two of his pet issues — gun control and marijuana legalization. Their donations greatly exceeded the limits on political contributions stipulated by campaign finance laws. Soros therefore laundered their contributions through Section 527 groups — dubbed “stealth PACs,” by the media of that time.

One of Soros’ stealth PACs was an anti-gun group called The Campaign for a Progressive Future (CPF). This group sought to neutralize the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA), by targeting for defeat any political candidate, at any level, who the NRA endorsed. Soros personally seeded CPF with $500,000. During the 2000 election, CPF funded political ads and direct-mail campaigns in support of state initiatives favoring background checks at gun shows.

Soros used other 527s to agitate in favor of pro-marijuana initiatives which appeared on the ballot in various states that year. Donors to Soros’ stealth PACs during the 2000 election cycle included insurance mogul Peter B. Lewis and InfoSeek founder Steven Kirsch, both of whom would turn up as major contributors to Soros’ Shadow Party during the 2004 election season.

During the 1990s, Soros had grown close to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. Their ascension to power gave him easy entreé to Washington elites of a sort he had long coveted but never enjoyed. Soros became the Clintons’ unofficial envoy to Russia and to other former Communist states. The assignment proved lucrative for him. Soros made a fortune in the so-called “Russiagate” phenomenon — the orgy of backroom “privatization” deals and Russian junk bond issues which Clinton officials such as Strobe Talbot, Al Gore and Lawrence Summers helped foster in the former USSR.

More importantly, Soros discovered in Hillary Clinton an ideological soulmate. Mrs. Clinton shared his aversion to U.S. “hegemony.” Like Soros, she sought to subordinate U.S. interests to global interests; U.S. sovereignty to global government; U.S. law to global courts; U.S. wealth to global taxation; and U.S. productivity to a scheme for global income redistribution. She also shared Soros’ hostility to Israel. Soros and Mrs. Clinton formed a friendship based upon their mutual beliefs. When the Clintons left office, Soros dedicated himself to restoring Hillary to the White House.

Soros has long experience in effecting “regime change.” He helped fund the 1989 “Velvet Revolution” that brought Vaclav Havel to power in the Czech Republic. By his own admission, he has helped engineer coups in Slovakia, Croatia, Georgia and Yugoslavia. When Soros targets a country for “regime change,” he begins by creating a shadow government — a fully formed government-in-exile, ready to assume power when the opportunity arises. The Shadow Party Soros has built in America greatly resembles those he has created in other countries, prior to instigating a coup.

At the heart of the American Shadow Party is the Center for American Progress (CAP). It was launched on July 7, 2003 as the American Majority Institute. The name was changed to Center for American Progress on September 1, 2003. The official purpose of the Center was to provide the left with a new think tank of its own. Regarding the new think tank proposed by Soros and Halperin, Hillary Clinton told Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine on October 12, 2003, “We need some new intellectual capital. There has to be some thought given as to how we build the 21st-century policies that reflect the Democrat Party’s values.” Expanding on this theme, Mrs. Clinton later told The Nation‘s Robert Dreyfuss, “We’ve had the challenge of filling a void on our side of the ledger for a long time, while the other side created an infrastructure that has come to dominate political discourse. The Center is a welcome effort to fill that void.”

Hillary Clinton tries to minimize the depth of her involvement with the Center for American Progress. But persistent press leaks confirm that she — and not its official President, John Podesta — has ultimate authority at CAP. “It’s the official Hillary Clinton think tank,” an inside source confided to Christian Bourge of United Press International. As Robert Dreyfuss notes in The Nation, “In looking at Podesta’s center, there’s no escaping the imprint of the Clintons. It’s not completely wrong to see it as a shadow government, a kind of Clinton White-House-in-exile — or a White House staff in readiness for President Hillary Clinton.”

Dreyfuss notes the abundance of Clintonites on the Center’s staff, among them Clinton’s national security speechwriter Robert Boorstin; Democratic Leadership Council staffer and former head of Clinton’s National Economic Council Gene Sperling; former senior advisor to Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget Matt Miller; and more. Dreyfuss writes: “[T]he Center’s kickoff conference on national security in October [2003], co-organized with The American Prospect and the Century Foundation, looked like a Clinton reunion, featuring Robert Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary; William Perry, his Defense Secretary; Sandy Berger, his National Security Adviser; Richard Holbrooke and Susan Rice, both Clinton-era Assistant Secretaries of State; Rodney Slater, his Transportation Secretary; and Carol Browner, his EPA administrator, who serves on the Center’s board of directors.” Hillary Clinton also attended the event, Dreyfuss reports.

In a November 11, 2003 interview with Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post, George Soros described how he had jump-started the Shadow Party in the summer of 2002. The Wall Street billionaire told how he summoned a team of political strategists, activists and Democrat donors to his Southampton beach house in Long Island. According to The Washington Post, attendees included: Morton H. Halperin (Director of Soros’ Open Society Institute); John Podesta (Democrat strategist and former Clinton chief of staff); Jeremy Rosner (Democrat strategist and pollster, ex-foreign policy speechwriter for Bill Clinton, and former special advisor to Secretary of State Madeline Albright on NATO; Robert Boorstin (Democrat strategist and pollster, ex-national security speechwriter for Clinton, and former advisor to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin); Carl Pope (ACT co-founder, Democrat strategist, environmentalist, and Sierra Club Executive Director); Steve Rosenthal (Labor leader, CEO of America Coming Together, former chief advisor on union matters to Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, former Deputy Political Director under DNC chairman Ron Brown, and AFL-CIO Political Director from 1996 – 2002); Peter Lewis (major Democrat donor and insurance entrepreneur, and founder and chairman of Progressive Corporation); Rob Glaser (major Democrat donor and Silicon Valley pioneer); Ellen Malcolm (co-founder and president of ACT and founder of Emily’s List); Rob McKay (major Democrat donor, Taco Bell heir, and McKay Family Foundation President; Lewis and Dorothy Cullman (major Democrat donors, and founders of the Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Foundation in New York).

At the meeting, Soros laid out his plan to defeat President Bush. He began implementing his plan before the meeting had adjourned. Blumenfeld writes: “Standing on the back deck, the evening sun angling into their eyes, Soros took aside Steve Rosenthal, CEO of the liberal activist group America Coming Together (ACT), and Ellen Malcolm, its president. They were proposing to mobilize voters in 17 battleground states. Soros told them he would give ACT $10 million. … Before coffee the next morning, his friend Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corp., had pledged $10 million to ACT. Rob Glaser, founder and CEO of RealNetworks, promised $2 million. Rob McKay, President of the McKay Family Foundation, gave $1 million, and benefactors Lewis and Dorothy Cullman committed $500,000. Soros also promised up to $3 million to Podesta’s new think tank, the Center for American Progress.”

The Shadow Party had been born, and by late 2003 Soros issued an open call for “regime change” in the United States. “America under Bush is a danger to the world,” Soros told Laura Blumenfeld in that same November 11, 2003 interview. Toppling Bush, said Soros, “is the central focus of my life… a matter of life and death. And I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.”

New groups are constantly being formed in the Shadow Party, while others vanish. To determine how many groups exist in the Shadow Party at any given time is difficult. Even more daunting is try to determine the purpose of each group. In some cases, groups seem to have no function other than to transfer funds from one 527 to another, perhaps in order to obscure the money trail. On December 10, 2003, for instance, a 527 group called the Sustainable World Corporation suddenly sprang into existence in Houston, Texas. Within days of its birth, it gave $3.1 million to the Joint Victory Campaign 2004, which in turn disbursed half of the payment to Harold Ickes’ Media Fund.

Look at the names and organizations. It’s a continuing pattern of the Who’s Who on the far left fringe. They keep reappearing on one list or another, with one group or another, in one article or another. Soros and his followers keep creating more and more “organizations” or arms to funnel money around. And all roads lead back to him and his back roll.

Do the democrats wonder who’s running their party? Do they even have an idea? I find it hard to believe that most of them would stay if they knew who was running the party and how it’s being run.

And a most absurd question is: Who’s running the country?

*******

Now for and interesting aside: when I dialed the number at the top of this blog, I got “California Nurses.”

What will be interesting to see are the “other” names that will come out when this ugly mess is brought to the sunlight: names like Theresa Heinz and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

Former Maryland Lt. Governor Townsend is on the ACORN advisory council which also include John Podesta, (head of the Center for American Progress – left wing liberal group and part of the former Clinton administration) and Andy Stern (president of the SEIU).

The alphabet soup connections have just begun: ACORN >SEIU > CAP > and on it will go.

And this now breaking: 345-75 The House voted to defund ACORN. I hope those 75 democrats can explain to their constituents why they were willing to dump more of OUR tax dollars into this organization. It’s obvious that their allegiance is not to the citizens of their districts but to scandal ridden and corrupt organization. That being the case, the 2010 election should be an easy decision for those voters.

In the words of that great senate statesman Roland Burris when chased down by Griff Jenkins and asked why he was one of 7 in the senate who voted against defunding: I voted for ACORN.